iconostasis

Over the weekend, we had a chance to see the interior of the Memorial Church of Saint Alexy of Moscow that Kaiser Wilhelm II commissioned to honour some twenty-two thousand Russian soldiers who perished fighting Napoleon’s armies during the decisive “Battle of the Nations,” that stopped the French advance. The living monument, center of the Russian orthodox community of Leipzig, was dedicated in 1913, a century after the fighting ended, and the exterior is undergoing reconstruction—along with the Volkerschlacht Denkmal, in recognition of this year’s anniversary.
The inside of the church, which is duplicated on an upper and lower storey, symbolic of Heaven and Hell, has an impressive array of icons covering the back wall (an iconostasis) and donated fixtures, including one faithful reproduction of the Hodegetria (the iconic canting of “she [the Virgin Mary] showing the way”) of the Mother of God of Smolensk, that tradition holds was painted by Saint Luke and made its way from Constantinople to Russia via a very circuitous route.
According to different sources, the revered icon was destroyed either during the Russian Revolution that followed just a few years later or during the German occupation in 1941. The relic, however, could have been hidden for safe-keeping as its own copy, like some of the other treasures originally plundered from Byzantium.

gentrification or trade-fair, fair-trade

I had the opportunity to pour over, in depth a few city blocks in Leipzig. I would not exactly call it a photo-essay since I didn’t
attempt any interviews to try to further limn the character of the area but I did notice a few fellow casual documentarians also snapping pictures, but the exploration was book-ended between two examples of a sort of decay and renewal with a lot of graffiti in between, and I felt that I did not have the chance beforehand to properly capture some of the beauty I found around me in this place.


I wondered to an abandoned factory yard, expansive along the banks of the river whose influence was far from a typical brownfield, historic and dignified with decoration and as likely to abut a block of well-kept dwellings and parks as another spot of neglect.

 These modern ruins are important reminders, I think, of transformation—and not the same as the Schadenfreude, the leering and the ogling that places, truly abandoned communities like Detroit, are subject to.
Leipzig is yet a centre of trade and industry but with some important changes, which repurposing and reinvention that is sometimes too revealing.  It is sort of like an urban Dream-Time.

Later, on one of the fly-a-ways that crosses the outskirts of the city, we passed over the massive, intact yet redundant, locomotive switch yard and repair station. I want to have the chance to descend down to that stratum as well one of these days.

My wanderings eventually took me to another former industrial site, a textile mill, ein Spinnerei, restored faithfully to the original shell but as luxury apartments.

Many other similar venues have been created in the past few years, and I just hope that people are not convinced that wreck and ruin is only held at bay by inviting in the so-called angel investors and at the expense of character and expression.

I wonder how a neighbourhood, told that it is blighted, responds to such accusations and perhaps unwelcome assistance.

just u.n. me or who is john galt?

In the tradition of On the Beach, Reds and other poignant but socially ambitious and uncomfortable cinematic works, my mother referred us to a long buried film made for television to which much talent was again given freely under the scripting of Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, called A Carol for Another Christmas.

The story is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and champions the work of the United Nations over the contemporary stance of American foreign policy of selective isolation and demonization, retelling the consequences of hum-bug through an embittered industrialist who lost a son, killed in action, and has abandoned all hope for international cooperation or reconciliation. The Ghost of Christmas Future shows the father how prevailing attitudes will lead to a nuclear apocalypse not too far from the present. Written during the Vietnam War and Bay-of-Pigs invasion, it was hardly a time for inspiring optimism and going against the grain or scare and accommodating optimism, like those other forgotten but timely examples did, it was never aired again until this last Christmas. In times of sabre-rattling, I wonder if it was some sense of national pride or aversion to the sombreness that made these movies go away without honours and what statements rallied behind say about a civilisation.

mixed metaphor

A brilliant and succinct commentary from Harvard Business Review is a sober reminder that a country and a corporation are not one in the same, just like with people. Bankruptcy is not something without precedence on a national level, as for businesses and households, but stretching, spindling the analogy, this neologism serves no good purpose. Instead the work of civics and the advocacy of the state becomes a nuisance to the metrics of recovery. Debts can be sovereign and governments are stewards of their people’s money and futures and not without exemption, but arrears do not accrue for a whole populace under the same model.

geselle, gestalt

Walking around the gorgeous neighbourhoods, I notice certain placards and think Notar, a notary-public, might be a good career-path for me since they always live in really posh places, it seems.

It made me think of a tale I heard once about a multi-lingual town in the former Sudetenland, explaining that a notary in Czech is called a notář and an emergency surgeon (ein Notarzt) was rendered the same way—pronounced like “note-arsch,” something essential but possibly not the wisest of job choices. Of course, a lot of other professionals have impressive, high-rent haunts. A new, maybe a trendy example that I came across was a practice specializing in oranisational—corporate psychology. It was a prime location to hang one’s sign and I really liked the symbolism. I wonder if this icon is a standard sign-post for such a collective and whom this practice consults for.